Chapter 9
Kasen
Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. I check my phone one last time. ‘ACCESS DENIED: LEVEL RESTRICTED’ flashes over the screen in red neon. Irritation seeps its way into my bones.
She won’t give me answers. I spent all day yesterday trying to get them out of her, but she shut up tight, refusing to eat or talk to any of us all damn day.
Eventually I was so worried about her, I had to give in and have my cook make her dinner.
She’s already so thin, I couldn’t risk her silent protest a second longer.
I don’t understand why she’s being so difficult. Can’t she see we just want to help her?
Bodhi pulls into the parking lot of a two-story apartment building that’s so run-down I wouldn’t send my worst enemies to live here. Paint melts off the walls it’s so worn, and there is a distinct stench of piss hanging in the air.
Bodhi motions to the top of the building. “Her place is on the second floor.”
We get out of his Ute and take the stairs.
While I was interrogating her yesterday, Bodhi was busy with our back-up plan.
A reverse image search of her face pulled up a profile of a girl too close to her for us not to investigate.
He asked around with a few local contacts, checked out some surveillance, and the next thing you know, we had an address for her. Bodhi is handy like that.
Bodhi stills in the doorway before pushing the partly ajar door wide open.
He motions to the broken security camera above the door, an assessing brow raised.
“She was living in this shithole?” He shakes his head.
It’s hard to tell if he’s disappointed or just plain disgusted for the poor girl.
He can act like he doesn’t care about Dove all he wants, but his tense body language as he walks into her dingy apartment says it all.
“Doubt it. My bet is someone beat us to it.” Her tiny apartment in Breakers Point is trashed.
Clothes tumbling out of drawers, some just outright turned upside down, the contents emptied onto the stained carpeted floor.
The small laminate kitchen is much the same, with broken plates and cutlery littering the floor and counter.
I pick up a photo of her and her dad. It appears to be from just a few years ago, an older version of Dove, but this one resembles the girl I knew better, long blonde hair and less-gaunt face.
Her eyes still have some of their sparkle.
I remember her dad. He didn’t think much of us boys, too much trouble for his perfect princess.
Dove wasn’t supposed to hang with us, but she was always rebellious and found a way whenever she could.
It’s been smashed, as if someone stood on it, the glass all in shards.
There are no other photos, no sign of a boyfriend or any friends either.
Just a shitty little apartment with very few cheap-looking belongings.
It makes me feel sick to think she was living like this. Sick because this is all on me.
“Looks like she left in a rush,” Bodhi observes. He’s been quiet since we got here, investigating the room like a detective searching for clues. If there is something to find in this space, he will find it.
“Get together what you can. We can take it home for her.” I toss the sports bag we brought with us down on her single bed.
Yeah, I should feel guilty about invading her privacy when she clearly doesn’t want me to know anything about her life, but I don’t.
If she won’t tell me what I want to know, I will get the information by any means necessary.
For her safety, of course. The video surveillance from The Beach Bar didn’t give us anything to go off.
The dude who snuck that note in her pocket is some kind of ninja, and I wasn’t pacing my room listening to the soft sound of her sleeping for a second day.
So, this morning while she was curled up in my bed still fast asleep, I left River in charge while Bohdi and I took a trip to her old hometown.
Breakers Point is three hours south of Deadwater Bay, far enough that I haven’t had a run-in with the Southern Breakers before this, but close enough for a day trip.
The two of us make quick work of sifting through the rubble and finding anything worth keeping.
“A uniform?” I throw the flimsy black dress toward Bodhi for him to inspect.
“The Silver Room.” He reads the logo embroidered across the chest then types something into his phone.
“It’s a local gentlemen’s club. Our birdie isn’t so innocent if she’s working a job like this.
Topless waitresses, strippers, it’s got the lot.
You reckon the Southern Breakers own this club, and that’s what he meant when he said she worked for him? ”
A homicidal impulse washes over me at the thought.
She better not have been shaking her tits and ass for cash, I’ll have to burn the club to the ground with every patron inside it.
“Maybe,” I growl out. I knew she was hiding something, a lot of somethings, I could see it in her eyes, the guilt and embarrassment she wouldn’t share with me.
I should have tried harder to find her. Should have spared no expenses in tracking her down.
But every time we looked into her disappearance, we came up empty.
Bodhi can usually track anyone down, it’s his specialty, but it was like she and her dad simply didn’t exist anymore.
Like they had help to keep them hidden. And if our suspicions are correct, they went to great lengths to stay hidden, including having both their names changed.
“She could have just worked behind the bar, the uniform’s the same.” He shoves an image in my face from their website. It’s a couple of busty girls in skintight dresses serving drinks, with massive grins like they enjoy their job. If they are working for the lowlifes I met, I doubt it.
I shove his phone away, not wanting to picture my birdie working in a shithole like that.
Moving through the room, I search for anything that will give me insight into what she’s been up to.
What brought her home, malnourished and battered?
I need something to go off, someone to blame. That’s not me.
“Oh shit, bro.” Bodhi chuckles. “She’s definitely not a virgin anymore, if that’s what you were hoping.”
I glance up to see the black cock-like vibrator Bodhi is now gripping.
“Should I pack it for her? Girl needs her toys, right?” Fucker thinks this is funny.
My glare hardens, and he places it back in the bedside drawer he got it from, backing away before I thump him.
Shoving him out of the way, I pull the drawer all the way out and empty the contents onto her bed.
A couple of diaries that I scoop up and throw in the bag, they might be handy later, especially if she still won’t talk to us.
There is also some cheap jewelry, a lighter with the Southern Breakers logo across the front.
A small cardboard box that I flip open. It holds a couple of bank cards and a license with her face on it, but most definitely not her name.
“This is why we never found her.” I pass the thing to Bodhi for him to do his checks.
“Elsie James.” He reads out the fake ID. “Matches that profile I found. If they went to the lengths of changing their names, this is more than them running. They were hiding from something or someone.”
I have a hunch, not that I saw anything after her dad dismissed me and I left their place.
I fucking knew I should have stayed. The tension was high, I could feel it, could see it by the look on her mother’s face.
Shit was about to go down, and I shouldn’t have left her alone with them.
But I had my own shit going on that night.
“You think Keller had something to do with it don’t you? ”
“She said her mum was murdered. Maybe she and her dad thought they would be next?” He raises a brow, saying exactly what I was thinking.
Keller was involved in all sorts of underworld operations.
Whatever he could do to grow his empire, he would.
People didn’t matter to him; it was all about the bottom line.
And if they got in his way, Bodhi could be right, they might have been in real trouble.
I know he was after a signature that night, he needed city council approval for a large development of the local shopping center.
It was the start of it all. His in with who counted, and once we had it, his company didn’t look back.
He had the respect from his people and their money to keep growing his empire.
That night changed all our lives. I don’t think he killed her mother, he wasn’t still there when I left, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have come back.
That way none of us boys would have known it was him.
Only trouble is, he’s not still around to ask, and any surveillance from that night was wiped.
“Hey, K, I reckon you wanna see this before we leave.” Bodhi’s sharp voice snaps me out of my thoughts. He has shoved her mirrored wardrobe door open to reveal a crazy-as-hell set up. With ring lights, a top-quality camera, and what looks like a burner phone still on charge.
“What was the password to her other phone?” I ask, knowing he was the one who broke into the phone she rocked up with.
“Deadwater.”